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Warren Buffett's final shareholder letter [pdf]

berkshirehathaway.com

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Re: Warren Buffett's final shareholder letter [pdf]

#151

Post by brnt »

throw20251110 wrote: post #141
input_sh wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To whom? To "charities" owned by other billionaires such as Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and those owned by his children. I don't want billionaires to donate anything, I don't want them to use their money to shape the world to their liking. I want them to pay their fair share of taxes and a functional government that properly allocates those extra funds instead of funding the bare minimum.

Your government is pretty dysfunctional the way it is. I'm not surprised billionaires don't want to waste their taxes on that crap.

Not surprised, but the best solution is not to let billionaires control, tax free, major parts of society instead. The best solution is building a more functional democracy which is in charge of redistribution.

Re: Warren Buffett's final shareholder letter [pdf]

#152

Post by cowsandmilk »

skeezyjefferson wrote: post #136
bfkwlfkjf wrote: post #10

Here's a person with integrity. They're very rare these days, especially amongst the wealthy.

lined his own pockets carving out companies and making people unemployed. that americans worship a man who never worked a day in his life is telling

That you think Warren Buffett never worked a day in his life is telling.

Re: Warren Buffett's final shareholder letter [pdf]

#153

Post by Libidinalecon »

saalweachter wrote: post #22
MichaelZuo wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A 25-30 year old man with all the accumulated wisdom and life experiences of a 95 year old highly successful man… would literally have opportunities worth many trillions of dollars? Because they would literally be multiple times better than the next most competent person on Earth of a similar age, and literally dozens of times better than even the median unicorn founder. So it seems like a given that the relatively p…

Would you rather be 95 years old with a trillion dollars or 25 years old with a thousand?

This is the great tragedy of 21st century western life. When you are 25 with a thousand dollars in realized wealth it is so hard to understand the incredible value of the deep out of the money call option you hold on life.

While the 95 year old trillionaire is really just deeply in debt with the creditor about to collect any day now.

Re: Warren Buffett's final shareholder letter [pdf]

#154

Post by formerly_proven »

fruitworks wrote: post #111
formerly_proven wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Squirrels don't really hoard in the sense trillionaires do ("gathering a great quantity for one's own private collection"), they take seeds and bury them all over the place, which is meaning #2 in the dictionary ("save in one's mind for a future need or use"). The squirrel and other animals eat them later, the 50+% nobody finds to eat can take root. That way, squirrels play an important role in seed dispersal for man…

you're splitting hairs. Squirrels evolve to save more food for themselves, everything else is an accident

In my view the effects on the ecosystem are way more important than whatever pressure creates a behavior. For both squirrels and trillionaires.

Re: Warren Buffett's final shareholder letter [pdf]

#155

Post by rwmj »

nosianu wrote: post #132
mcmoor wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's hard because while for a 1 in 10,000,000 achievement, even if they're lucky to get 1 in 1,000 just by being born at the right place/time, they still need to fought hard for the rest of 1 in 10,000. I've seen people attributing Taylor Swift' success entirely to luck. But eventhough of course she has inherent advantage, she still has to defeat tons of people who also has the same or even more inherent advantage as…

I think your comparison with Taylor Swift is not good, a distraction even. Billionaires optimize for very different goals than most other people. You don't become one by accident, while you are actually focused solely on your work. That will at most get you to a few million, maybe tens of millions. At higher wealth, you need to focus on the wealth itself. I don't think that that is something good if (even) more peopl…

This is very true in my limited experience. The two very rich people I've known relentlessly pursued getting rich, even while the rest of us were working hard on technical things at their companies. It's quite tiring how much they think about money / company structures / shareholdings.

Re: Warren Buffett's final shareholder letter [pdf]

#156

Post by harry8 »

bfkwlfkjf wrote: post #106
harry8 wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He definitely wants us to think that about his integrity, his fans even more so and in fairness, he's pretty good. Not quite the sunday-school capitalism perfection that some would have us believe. Which can grate a bit if you've looked in detail at his career.

I've all shareholder letters, about 1500 pages. Please point to whatever you're insinuating.

Off the top of my head, a couple of examples.

The "white knight" purchase of Salomon Bros stake to "save" them from a hostile takeover was a redistribution of wealth from the existing shareholders who would have accepted the deal to him & his fund. Is that evil? No, I don't think so. Is it perfect ethics, that's a personal ethical call. Colluding with management to redistribute wealth from the shareholders professional managers are meant to serve to yourself? Certainly profitable. Salomon managers kept their jobs and bonuses too. Buffet spoke about how impressed with their ethics he was and that being his motivation. Ok.

The purchase of the Goldman's stake during the GFC at what was it a 20% discount to market? Evil? Again no. Did he insist instead of just taking a huge windfall, on underwriting an offer at that price and throwing it open to small investors so anyone who would back the bank in the crisis collects 20% on top of buying on market? That would be hugely admirable, democratic and patriotic but less profitable.

Going to the start, moving Berkshire's pension fund from debt to equity. Did he get the approval of all the pension plan's beneficiaries for that change in risk? He was right, fine, sure. Was that his risk to take on their behalf? Worked out great. Do you want your pension fund manager going against the accepted wisdom on risk? Well you do if it works, but you can't take on the risk in hindsight. There are no shortage of managers who /know/ they're right and the market is wrong, like he did then. Do you want them to act on that with your assets without your full and informed consent? You (and I) do if it's Warren Buffet but he was not Warren Buffet yet.

On the standards of investment managers he is pretty good, as I said. Is he this perfect paragon of ethics. Well his fans seem to think so (and loudly) and they are allowed to. As am I to differ with that assessment. This is worlds away from declaring that Buffet is in league with both Darth Vader and Sauron to torture innocent babies to an early death and a fate of never having heard of Benjamin Graham. I would say he is far more on the right side of things than wrong and has been largely a force for good in the investment industry. "Which of his perfections impresses you the most?" Give me a break. Critical faculties are worth keeping.

Re: Warren Buffett's final shareholder letter [pdf]

#157

Post by bluecalm »

input_sh wrote: post #123
epolanski wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He's donated, already, the equivalent of 200+ billions USD (give or take 420M class B shares). Say what you want, but the list of billionaires who have donated such large amounts of money while still alive (or dead) is small. Cherry picking events like layoffs, without truly knowing how much was he involved (Berkshire directors notoriously enjoy lots of autonomy) or if the layoffs made sense, etc, seems a stretch whe…

To whom? To "charities" owned by other billionaires such as Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and those owned by his children. I don't want billionaires to donate anything, I don't want them to use their money to shape the world to their liking. I want them to pay their fair share of taxes and a functional government that properly allocates those extra funds instead of funding the bare minimum.

The government already has way more money every year to spend. It wastes a lot of it. A world where all surpluses are distributed by a committee of politicians and their buddies would a be a terrible one.

Re: Warren Buffett's final shareholder letter [pdf]

#158

Post by Libidinalecon »

marcus_holmes wrote: post #40
neilv wrote: post #23

If only more billionaires would start sounding as aware as this 95 year-old one: > But Lady Luck is fickle and – no other term fits – wildly unfair. In many cases, our leaders and the rich have received far more than their share of luck – which, too often, the recipients prefer not to acknowledge. Dynastic inheritors have achieved lifetime financial independence the moment they emerged from the womb, while others hav…

I have found that it's incredibly hard to get successful entrepreneurs to acknowledge that a lot of their success is down to luck. I think it's got something to do with the Protestant Work Ethic - that if they were smart and worked hard then they "deserve" their wealth , but if they just got lucky they don't "deserve" it. So acknowledging that luck played an important part in their success gives them bad feelings, an…

I think this is because of the protestant work ethic + probability/statistics instead of deterministic chaos.

Deterministic chaos in the sense of "fixed, non-random rules producing outcomes that are unpredictable in the long term due to extreme sensitivity to initial conditions".

A life lottery of initial conditions and then it plays out via deterministic chaos is just such an unacceptable idea to the modern protestant self conception.

Instead we will continue to pretend the harder you work the luckier you get because at least then we have some free will in the situation.

Buffet is a great example and has made this point practically. Won the life lottery to not have been born in the year 1400 and the idea of buying 6 packs of coke to sell to my friends for a profit as a little boy is just not in my nature, again because of my initial conditions.

Re: Warren Buffett's final shareholder letter [pdf]

#159

Post by adrianN »

MonkeyClub wrote: post #104
wbl wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Chance favors the prepared mind.

And compounding works wonders over the long run. Apparently he started his first investment at age 11. 8 decades is a long time to compound even at low rates.

Many people manage to reach bankruptcy much faster than eight decades.

Re: Warren Buffett's final shareholder letter [pdf]

#160

Post by Krishan_28 »

It’s the end of an era. Buffett’s decision to “go quiet” marks a graceful handoff after decades of unmatched transparency and wisdom in business. Greg Abel stepping in feels right—steady, disciplined, and already trusted. Still, it’s hard to imagine a Berkshire meeting without Warren’s humor and plain talk. Thanksgiving letters sound like a fitting encore.
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